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Wine Tasting - Mature California Cabernets In April, we held the third of what we expect will be an ongoing series of wine tastings. We started with a small group of just six couples interested in wine but with varying levels of wine knowledge -- it was more important that we would have fun that really be able to identify the wines. The group was formed with the following guidelines:
In our third gathering, we forced ourselves to consider the mysteries of mature cabernet sauvignon wines from California; the rules were that the wine must be from the 1990 vintage or older. The wines were opened roughly thirty minutes before tasting and were not decanted. The wines were tasted blind. We gave each member of the party a simple scorecard so that they could make notes on what they thought of each wine. We also asked everyone to list their #1 favorite, their #2 favorite, and their #3 favorite. The table below lists the wines in order of the consensus favorites. This was a fairly consistent tasting as two clear favorites were clearly separated from the rest.
The consensus ranking was determined by 3 points for each #1 listing, 2 points for #2, and 1 point for #3. Any ties are broken by the number of #1 votes, etc. The most-liked mature wine of the tasting was a 1987 cabernet sauvignon from Oakford winery. However, the favorite wine of the tasting was a 1998 Duckhorn which was tasted as the last of the seven wines. This was a "ringer" to test whether the group could identify a new wine compared to wines that were at least twelve years old. The group did successfully identify the 1998 Duckhorn as the youngest wine -- five of our nine guessing members named it as the youngest. The other four all guessed the 1989 Duckhorn. Maybe there's something about the style of wine that keeps it young -- or maybe we stored the 1998 Duckhorn in a way that kept it seeming younger? This led us to consider the hypothesis that a younger wine may have an intensity and sharpness in tannins that the older wines can't match. The older wines were clearly more mature and well-rounded -- mellower in their own way. Regardless, all of the wines were good and, in any normal circumstance, any of us would have been happy to have drunk these with our dinner. Speaking of dinner, following the tasting, we pulled the cork on a lovely magnum of Mt. Eden cabernet sauvignon to go with our dinner menu:
Next tasting - California cabernet maturity comparisons
Other Wine Tastings
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